Spring Cleaning

May 2002

You place this one,
the one with blonde hair and brown eyes,
face sullied with age,
white dress torn at the seam, aside.

You have no need of her now;
it has always been the other.

In a box she goes
this collectible of yours,
this pretty-faced-flaxen-mane porcelain;
this put away possession.

The other was on the shelf,
until you took her down.
Dust her off, try again—
memories sweep away the cobwebs.

You place this one,
the one with the blonde hair and brown eyes,
face sullied with age,
white dress torn at the seam, away.

Out of sight,
out of touch,
tottering on the edge—daring her to fall.

Tuesday Fell--A Prose Piece

April 17, 2002

My image of desert is cooling now, against the ice-cold fair of snow-capped mountains through the open window. I can hear our laughter trailing late and long through the sallow atrium in the hush of night, as voices and footsteps steal our hidden moments. I look from the windowpane and I see us there, children at play—long lost friends in flight, lovers that lie in wait. We hide from the world in our hallowed vestibule, in the dawn of the morning, in the wake of pretending. In the hour the world sleeps, we have no name, no face, and no identity. We are shadows in the corridor, we are long goodbyes and salt stained kisses. You held my head to you as I poured my tears into your shirt pocket. One by one they gathered there, collecting time. You shiver under the covering of wide open spaces, night falling all around you, your brilliant blue vanishing in the dark. I reach for you with closed eyes, ebony eyes wet with April rainfall. Heartbeat against heartbeat you are mine under the midnight dusk, under the silver glow of heaven’s stars. I feel life course scarlet through the frozen of your hands as ambiguity steals your warmth from me. Ashen stroke for ashen stroke I whisper your name into the unmoving heat of the spring wind. Stubbornly, you cling to winter.
Dormant against the flurry of storm tossed fears; beginnings are sown into silence, sown into auburn soil unearthed.
You dig deep.
Into the hollow of your heart I fall, endlessly descending into hidden corners of false affection, of artificial disquiet.
There I stay, kept distant, kept buried.
There I stay waiting, waiting for the gray moon to turn the tide, waiting for the nocturnal seasons to amend; waiting, for the sun to rise again over our frozen desert.

Ice Cream

October 24, 2002--Revised

Dissolving over the edges,
the past melts away.
Sky blue eyes search
for her, the flaxen haired
girl of summer.
Nineteen leaves have fallen
as I have deepened
into the dark, short
reflection of autumn’s mirror.
Can you still see me?
I look down,
away, afraid
I have disappeared to you.
The wind moves
softly as the air
turns your touch colder,
and somehow I know
—winter is coming.
I open the letter you
wrote to her, the golden
her of days gone by.
Memories of white liquid
seas and laughter have
been long since quieted,
have been long since hidden.
God’s Alaskan hands, old
and tired rest weary
on my head, words
from heaven descend
with the promise of miracles.
I stare at her, this daughter
of autumn, this portrait of a stranger.
She sees through my eyes,
my soul,
the soul of hot days
and blazing suns, the soul of
deep rock canyons where
we sat—eyes closed, as the
night winds slid, illicit
across my face.

Three Thousand Miles

I sit
in the canopy of
my dark you, creating
harmony inside a window.
The moon hangs red
and green over us, worlds apart.
The music of silence evolves,
as we become the coherency of stillness.
Laughter is slipping,
drowning as you are withdrawing.
Withdrawing into places I can not go,
places I have long ago left behind.
Blindness is the only sound you make
across the miles, across the three thousand
tones of your voice.
No taste
No touch
Inconsistency running
as the current of our connection,
as you fail me in perfect time.
Splashes of water and mirth give
life to my sightlessness beyond your transom,
and with eyes closed my vision is clear.